[Apparelyzed]

Just wondering, anyone else fight for the the Crackling on roast pork?

I know it's bad for you, but ohhhh, it tastes so good!

Is this the same in the U.S. and other countries, I know Poland is keen on fat, in fact, last year the Brits had a shortage because Poland were buying up all the lard a Christmas!

simon.

[Avocado Baby]

mmmmm...yummy!

[Okie Rick]

A rep from the US here, semi-southern redneck state - Oklahoma. Crackling here (in my house) gets made into gravy. Now I'll fight you for the turkey tail on Thanksgiving and I've purchased many many bags of deep fried pork rinds. mmm mmmmm. Are we hungry yet?

Okie

[swank]

Hi, I'm from South Africa... and jip we also fight for the crackling :-)

This post has been edited by swank: 17 August 2006 - 07:45 AM

[Jilly]

Not so keen on it myself, but yep....here in NZ too!

[Chilepepper]

What is Crackling meat? I've never heard of this meaning before.

[ruth]

Chilepepper, on Aug 18 2006, 01:43 AM, said:

What is Crackling meat? I've never heard of this meaning before.

Crackling is the skin and fat (no meat) from a pork joint - you rub salt into it before cooking so it goes all crispy and crunchy, then serve it up with your Sunday roast dinner! Really healthy

[juls]

Yuk...that sounds disgusting must be a uk thing

[Chilepepper]

Oh I think I will pass on this one

[ruth]

Chilepepper, on Aug 18 2006, 09:37 AM, said:

Oh I think I will pass on this one

Seeing as we are on the subject of glorious british food, do you guys get Yorkshire puddings, mushy peas or jellied eels (not on the same plate!)? - hmmm tasty (apart from jellied eels - eugh!!)

Are there any yummy local dishes we might not get in the UK?

[Apparelyzed]

jellied eels

Nuff said!

Stilton Cheese (has blue veins of mould running through it), Yum!

Simon

[Chilepepper]

Ok I would have to say that hotdogs are disgusting. They are made of end organs and what ever else that was left behind from the carcass.

I remember when I was a kid I used to eat them right from the package. Thinking back I wonder why I never got sick. But I do remember the texture it left behind in my mouth. Jeeeeeeees it's turning my stomach as I think about those times.

[juls]

I LOVE moreton bay bugs, but only the tails and oysters...living on the coast i love any seafood really, except jellied eel...i don't know what they are but they sound that disgusting that i would never want to try one!
I love hot dogs....i don't want to know whats in them otherwise i may never eat one again

[ruth]

juls, on Aug 18 2006, 11:44 AM, said:

I LOVE moreton bay bugs, but only the tails and oysters...living on the coast i love any seafood really, except jellied eel...i don't know what they are but they sound that disgusting that i would never want to try one!
I love hot dogs....i don't want to know whats in them otherwise i may never eat one again

What are moreton bay bugs?

Hot dogs are no worse than any other sausage, so long as you get the more expensive ones (and read the label) The tinned ones have mechanically reclaimed chicken in them (yuck!). My Dad worked in a sausage factory for a bit years ago, and said that after doing that he couldnt eat sausage for years afterwards!!!!

Jellied eels are a London thing (a lot of my family are from London, and these are a regular at family parties and weddings n stuff) They come in a little pot, and are pieces of eel, with salty jelly (a bit like the jelly you get in pork pies). They are truly revolting....

A few things I loved as a child, but dont seem to get outside Yorkshire are:

Parkin (esp on Bonfire night)
Pie n peas (again, esp on Bonfire night - its a hot pork pie with mushy peas)
Pigs trotters (used to get them roasted from the butchers)

My absolute favourite would have to be real Yorkshire fish and chips - they dont do them properly anywhere else!

Can tell its nearly lunchtime

[juls]

Hot dogs are one of those things that i eat as a special treat, with a HUGE amount of tomato sauce, i know they're disgusting but i just can't help myself!!!!
What's Parkin?
The jellied eels sound even worse then i imagined

Moreton bay bugs are kinda like a lobster but smaller, uglier and you can only really eat the tail...and they're alot nicer then they sound!

Pig trotters !!!

[ruth]

Parkin is kind of like a cake - it looks like chocolate brownie, but tastes of treacle instead of chocolate (yummy!)

Moreton bay bugs sound a but like scampi - nice!!! I like seafood too

[mttb14]

Pigs Trotters are only ham, once the fat is cut off, but I prefer hocks, which are slightly higher up the leg, and there is more ham on them. Proper good old fashioned ham.

When buying any meat out of tins or things like sausages are better bought if you buy them from a butchers and read the meat content.

I like chicken nuggets if they are made from the breast meat, but not the cheaper ones made from the scraps of meat left on the chicken carcasses and then blasted with pressurised air until the bones are completely meat free, and then reformed into the shape of whatever cut of meat they decide. The same goes for chicken kiev's etc, the ones made from the breast meat are fine, I don't buy anything which is made from reformed meat as it us just the scraps forced together to make a product.

John was a butcher for 20 years so we like proper cuts of meat from the local butcher. If its cheap from the supermarkets there is usually a reason behind it.

I hate any kind of margarine, there are so many chemicals, additives and food colourants just to turn the grey sludge into a yellow substance which is supposed to be a butter substitute. If you read the list of ingredients there are loads and loads of things in it. The advertisers try to sell it to the public by saying made with pure butter milk, butter milk is the product thrown away when making butter.

Butter is totally natural, it is whipped double cream, after whipping it for a while the cream splits into two, butter milk and the solids which are butter. The butter milk is then discarded, or sold to be used in margarine, etc and the solids are rinsed in cold water to wash away any remaining butter milk. It is sprinkled lightly with salt and patted into the desired shape. No additives or preservatives, no colourants or E's just cream and salt.

I agree fish and chips from Whitby, North Yorkshire are to die for, cooked in good pure beef dripping, which is the product that crisps up the chips and the batter cook crispy and light.

My favourite next to pork crackling (scratchings) is the crisp skin of a freshly cooked chicken. Both are pure heaven and both are fought over in our kitchen.

Maria

This post has been edited by mttb14: 18 August 2006 - 04:52 PM

[gazrobsuk]

Couldn't have put it better myself, agree with just about all of it.

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[mttb14]

Gaz, Are you importing smilies from another site? Naughty boy, Simon will smack your backside for you.

I have never understood why someone would want a preformed steak burger when for about a £1 more they can have a proper steak? It is beyond me. I would rather have a smaller piece of real steak than a pretend one made out of mince, even if you don't have much money proper cuts of meat are usually cheaper weight for weight than all these preformed things offered to you in the supermarkets.

It is the same when people buy preformed gammon steaks, they are about 50p cheaper than a proper piece of horseshoe gammon steak, I know which I would prefer and I know exactly where on the carcass of a pig it comes from.

It is also a false economy buying from supermarkets, most things are cheaper in smaller shops if you check, and you don't end up throwing food away as you only buy what you can eat, rather than because it looks nice in the supermarket, but by the time you come to eat it the date is up, and it ends up in the bin.

We are fans of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, River Cottage, Cook on the Wild Side, we also like Jimmy's Farm and similar shows. Going back to eating traditional food, no E's or additives to be found.

Maria

[Chilepepper]

Yes pork hawks are nice. I usually buy them this time of the year( near the end of summer when the beets, carrot's and potatos are plentiful in the garden. I buy the hawks smoked. What I do with them is make borsh. This receipt I learned off my grandmother year's and years ago. I would say it's my favorite dish. My wife Sabine cooks the smoke pork hawk with sour kerat(not sure how to spell it). She cooks it until the meat falls off the bone..... Jess I'm starting to get hungry.

When it comes to meat in the can I would say that SPAM as to top the list for the time most disgusting thing that has ever been created by man. It says it is meat, but it sure does not taste like it. Lots and lots and lots of cemicals etc. I know this guy who used to love frying it. Man did his house smell when this was being done.

[Jilly]

We have good fish and chips here too. I used to own a takeaway shop with my ex husband and theres nothing like fresh fish and chips straight from the deep frier!! Yum!

Morten Bay bugs....YUMMY! Yep we get them here too!

What about fresh scallops - I go nuts over them!

[Okie Rick]

Y'all eat the dickens out of pork, don't ya? We here do also but with equal meals of beef and vegetables.

Hotdogs are gorund up ears, noses, buttho's, eyelids....anything you can't buy over the counter. God I love 'em, bologna (baloney too.) Spam is a wonder meat - it kept the Russian Army from starving during WWII. Also most 'wonder' what it is. It's pork shoulder - nothing more or less.

Those morten bay bugs sound ike our crawdads or crawfish - minature lobsters.

The US is highly populated with beef fattening and processing plants and chicken houses. Not your 'in the back yard' chicken house rather acres and acres of chickens that never see the light of day from hatching to butchering and shipping to the stores & markets. The beef processing plants are 24 hour a day butcher shops and packing houses. And...we have equal numbers of pork packing plants.

Buffalo wings, kipper snacks and sardines, fried pork rinds, crackers and a 6 pack of Coors beer ususally starts off a football game in this house. Pizza, tacos, more beer, etc. come in as needed.

Think I'll go get a salad - fresh grown tomatoes, green peppers and lettuce are in season here!

okie
-

This post has been edited by Okie Rick: 19 August 2006 - 03:03 AM

[juls]

i can't believe how many people eat pork! When i was 6 i was told it's the closest thing to human flesh....haven't touched it since (even if it's not true, i just can't bring myself to do it) My 'hot dogs' are gluten free kangaroo meat sausages..very nice and very healthy
My bf is in london at the moment and he got a meal at a pub the other night, it was pork and THREE types of potatoes cooked in different ways...is that a normal meal to eat in the UK???

Yes, i do love scallops, anything out of the ocean!

As for the good ol' we lived in the desert for a year and that was our main source of food...it's grose, i really don't want to know whats in it, but it kept us going!!!
I love tacos too, i just don't eat them in front of anyone...it isn't pretty, could they make it any harder to pick them up??

[mttb14]

Hi,

No we don't normally eat three types of potatoes on one plate. Sometimes we have mashed potatoes and roast potatoes with a roast dinner.

In our house we eat beef, lamb, pork and small amounts of chicken, John was a butcher for 20 years, so we go to local butchers, we buy meat from our local area, we are not into intense farmed food, my ex-husband was a farmer and our animals all grazed the land, nothing was intensively farmed, no animals were shut in little sheds away from day light.

I like to know that the meat I eat has come from animals that had a happy life whilst they were alive, happily eating green grass and enjoying fresh air, and taken to a reputable slaughter house, and killed humanly. I am not a fan of chicken and I eat more duck than chicken, ducks have to live outside free range, and I prefer to eat duck eggs too. I can't see the appeal of eating mass produced chickens, locked up in sheds, I prefer chickens that have lived outside, the taste is totally different.

If more people stood up and demanded that their food was kept humanly, then the supermarkets would have to listen. Beef is supposed to be hung, that means the blood has left the carcass and the meat (muscle) has rested and relaxed, it is not supposed to be bright red, it is supposed to be a dark red with natural thin veins of fat running through it, this way it is guaranteed to be tasty and tender. The fat melts down and the flavour goes through the meat and keeps the meat tender and moist.

Unfortunately, most people in today's society have been totally misinformed by believing the supermarkets advertising, but luckily thanks to todays chefs and cookery programs people in the UK are being re-educated and told that meat needs to hang, and that meat needs some fat on it prior to cooking, surplus fat can be removed after cooking for those that do not like it.

Many people make me laugh when they say that they ony eat chicken or fish because it is kinder to the animal, most fish are caught up in massive trawler nets and end up drowning and suffocating because they are crushed in trawler nets for ages before being sorted. Most chickens have lived in sheds fed with food to fatten them as quickly as possible, with false light and no real fresh air or daylight.

How the hell they think that is kinder to the animal is beyond me. A cow, pig or lamb has a very pleasant life right upto the very end, and once they are at the slaughter house, it is all over in seconds. John also worked in a slaughter house, so I will definately stick with beef, pork and lamb as my priority foods with free range poultry and fish caught by John, humanly on the end of his rod. If the fish isn't big enough it is set free to swim for another day.

Maria

[xMaddiex]

i didnt know what crackling was til reading this post, and im about as british as you get. being a vegetarian, i wouldnt eat it, but most people i know love the crispy chicken skin stuff you get when you over roast a chicken...i always thought it was very weird...